I brought in a bag of “trash” that I told my kids I took from my weird neighbor’s porch. I really do have a weird neighbor, who I know very little about, so I described him. Then I told them we would be inferring information about him based on the items in his garbage. The kids had a BALL with it! By the end of the activity they were concerned for my safety based on what the inferred. It was great!

In their independent reading, they are now working on an inference chart, making inferences about the main character in their novels and citing the evidence to back them up. So far it’s going very well.